Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
Books were despised by the Viking Tribes, as they were seen as a horrible civilizing influence and a threat to the barbarian culture.
The destruction that barbarians leave behind has a grim fascination, doesn't it? We're reminded how thin is the veneer of civilization.
Anyone happy in this age and place Is daft or corrupt. Better to abdicate From a material and spiritual terrain Fit only for barbarians.
American authors or scientists are prone to consider the wealthy businessman as a barbarian, as a man exclusively intent upon making money.
Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians.
If you believe you are the city on the hill, the world's best hope, it is tempting also to believe that outside your boundaries are barbarians.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.
I was a barbarian, tender and full of violence. I translated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one.
Bluebell, you couldn’t take me if I was blindfolded and had both hands tied behind my back.” “Bluebell?” Illium narrowed his eyes. “That’s it, Barbarian.
Of course the barbarians' aim of world domination has not escaped the attention of the Europeans, perhaps because unlike us they are closer to the walls.
I most certainly believe that it is the gift of God that I am what I am. And so I dwell amongst barbarians, a proselyte and an exile, for the love of God.
I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.
There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all. He who invented god is a fool. He who propagates god is a scoundrel. He who worships god is a barbarian.
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized.
The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.
It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.
But Paul, in his preaching of the Gospel, is a debtor to deliver the word not to Barbarians only, but also to Greeks, and not only to the unwise, who would easily agree with him, but also to the wise.
It was easy for people to be derisive about our music because they saw what we were doing as retro. But we were like barbarians trying to crash the gates of the bloated progressive rock that we despised.
One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
Unlike Europe, China can't be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they've been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don't see any need to.
Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refueling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home.
When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come?
However, while the Nazi barbarians and their collaborators threatened the entire world, I could not accept his philosophy and, after several earlier attempts, was finally accepted into the Canadian Infantry Corps during the last year of World War II.
There's a line I love in Conan The Barbarian where someone says, "That used to be another snake cult, now I see it everywhere." That's certainly true of documentaries. I wouldn't say it's ubiquitous, but it's become close to ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
What a thing, Europe. Europe! The cultured Europe! We are the barbarians, the Indians, the blacks, the southerners. How cynical is Europe. Chavez the tyrant! Chavez the strongman! Chavez, who wants to stay forever. While there, they have kings, my friend!
I'd love to feature for the Barbarians. I'd love to win a Champions Cup, and I'd love to get to another World Cup and make a fist of it: get to a World Cup final at least and see what could have been, particularly after 2011 when Wales reached the semi-finals.
The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious fortunes and their lives.
Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one.
But [the Arabs'] friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia.
We must assent to the will of Heaven above and conform to the wishes of men on earth below, but the government should assert the majesty of its warlike might in order to drive away the hordes of fierce and cruel men. We know that the dispositions of these outer barbarians are as ravenous as those of wolves.
Citizens of Rome might boast that the claim of 'Civus romanus sum' set them apart from barbarians and slaves, and it was true up to a point, but Roman citizens lived in a society that accepted pain, cruelty, and torture as the norm, and in which there was no suggestion of equality at birth or mercy in the afterlife.
I was a good college kid, all-American and baseball-playing, living in the dorms with a million barbarians. I did not expect to be claimed by Fitzgerald hook, line, and sinker. 'This Side of Paradise' - that sweet, sophomoric pastiche of notes, scenes, poetry, and plays - I felt like he'd written the book just for me.
The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'
I've always been fascinated by the Norsemen, their lives, history and cosmology. The more we study them the more interesting they become... breaking their own stereotypes. We usually think of them as barbarians, but there were aspects to their society that shows a tremendous level of civilization, sophistication and social advance.
The most successful hyperpowers are the ones where there was actual intermixing. Tang dynasty China was China's golden age, and contrary to what I was told when I was growing up, Tang China was founded by a man who by today's standards was no more than half Chinese. It was a mixed-blood dynasty that pulled in 'barbarians' from the steppe.
You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.' Ford was running after him. Very very fast. 'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!
We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.
Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.